To NPR: There is a serious omission in your reporting

Failure to report on systemic defects in our society threatens the wellbeing of future generations and harms the interests of members of the larger community of life on earth.

Natural resources belong to all of us.

Why no discussion of the concept of public property rights as it relates to natural resource wealth and economic externalities?

Why no discussion of the concept of or the consequences of economic externalities?

Economic externalities distort our economy by shifting harmful side-effects of economic activity, (such as resource depletion and degradation of environmental quality in the form of pollution and despoilation of and blighting of the landscape), away from the place where economic actors would pay attention to them--the balance sheet. Externalities mean that environmentally harmful products and services cost LESS than what they would cost if polluters and those who take natural resources and degrade environmental quality were made to pay a fee in proportion to the value taken or damage done.

When prices lie to us, we do the wrong thing.

When prices tell us the truth about the real costs of what we do, we are more likely to do the right thing.

To NOT report the fact that there is a systemic flaw in our politics and economics that skews all of our decisions toward more environmentally damaging practices is an egregious neglect of our responsibility to our children and those yet to be born. It is not fair to the larger community of life on earth. We have a solemn duty to refrain from despoiling the planet, yet economic externalities make it more profitable to do exactly that.

The concept of public property rights refers to wealth that we all own in common. It makes sense to hold natural resource wealth, (air and water and other resources in the natural environment), as being a kind of public property wealth. No person's effort goes into creating natural resource wealth, and it follows that no person has a greater claim to this wealth than any other person. So, it makes sense that, if we take account of externalities by charging a fee, all people ought to share in the proceeds of such fees, because these proceeds would be a monetary representation of the value of air and water and other natural resources.

We cannot make fundamental changes to address the systemic flaws of our society unless we first have a public discourse about these flaws.

We CAN create a sustainable and more just civilization. But to do so will require that we respect public property rights and equal ownership of natural resource wealth.

When will we hear discussion of such ideas on npr?

Why does extreme poverty and environmental degradation plague the earth?

The real estate bubble grew larger and crashed harder because the financial services industry ignored moral hazard

The real estate bubble was made more dangerous to the larger society by bankers who borrowed money (they were highly leveraged) to buy bundled mortgages, even though they knew that the bubble would burst and they risked loosing their (and their investors' and depositors') money.

Some people within the system objected that this strategy was inherently risky, and heard the reply, "Oh, we'll just get the government to bail us out when it all collapses".

We should NOT bail out those who disregard moral hazard in their actions in pursuit of personal gain. To do so makes future calamities more likely and probably more severe.

We should allow those who gambled on a government bailout to take the brunt of the losses that the collapse of the bubble now produces for them.

The financial institutions and investors in the future will be less likely to repeat such behavior when they are forced to learn by "hard knocks", so to speak.

A bailout teaches that such behavior will be profitable in the future: The upside of the business cycle is "capitalism", with individuals reaping the rewards. But society at large pays the consequences on the downside.

That is just not fair.

John Champagne


A cure for what ails the planet